by Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY Sports

by Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS - Whichever Indiana Pacers team anyone expected - the good, first-half-of-the-season Pacers or the bad, second-half Pacers - the Miami Heat were overwhelmed Sunday in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Using a balanced inside-out, outside-in attack, Indiana manhandled Miami offensively in a controlling 107-96 victory in this East finals rematch. All five Pacers starters scored in double figures, led by forward Paul George's 24 points, and when the Pacers didn't crush Miami with three-pointers, they befuddled them with pick-and-rolls, cuts and crisp passing, which led to easy looks near the basket.

Seldom do the Heat look at each other so confused on defensive breakdowns.

"We're just being aggressive off the bounce," Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. "We're trying to attack, force help and then share it. It's a simple plan, but it's not always easiest to execute. But I thought our guys executed pretty well tonight."

If there's such a thing as an 11-point blowout, this was it. This was Indiana's game from start to finish, quite literally. The Pacers never trailed and led by 10 in the first quarter and 19 late in the third quarter. When Miami threatened to turn it into a game in the fourth, Indiana put the brakes on the Heat's run.

The Pacers made six of their first seven three-pointers, finished 8-for-19 from behind the arc and overpowered Miami in the paint. How easily did Indiana get to the rim? The Pacers shot 37 free throws.

Center Roy Hibbert had 19 points and nine rebounds, and forward David West followed up his stellar performance in their series-clinching Game 6 win vs. the Washington Wizards with 19 points and seven rebounds.

Indiana had Miami scrambling to recover defensively for most of the game, and the Heat were more than a half-step late. The Pacers were more versatile on the perimeter and stronger on the inside, and that's how they believe they win this series.

"We want to have balance," Vogel said. "We want to utilize our wings' strengths, and we want to take advantage of our big guys inside as well. So it's not one or the other, it's both. But we certainly want to be aggressive at all positions."

James said he expected Indiana's best, not the team that floundered through the second half of the season and needed seven games to beat the Atlanta Hawks in the first round and six to eliminate the Wizards.

Since 1984, Game 1 winners have won NBA playoff series 79% of the time. "It's a good start to the series, but it's just a good start. That's all it is," Vogel said.

Indiana established the blueprint, and now Miami must redesign its game plan. The Heat must improve offensively, so it's not the James and Dwyane Wade show again, as those two had 52 points. Center Chris Bosh was silent, point guards Mario Chalmers and Norris Cole were outplayed and Miami's three-point shooting stunk.

Still, the Heat scored 96 points against the NBA's top-rated defense. Offense wasn't the glaring issue. The Pacers hit 100 points for the second time in the playoffs, and they hadn't reached 107 points since March 15. As impressive as the Pacers were offensively, the Heat also were poor defensively.

"That's probably us at our worst defensively, and you have to give them credit," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "They played well, and we never got into a rhythm where we could defend without fouling."

James said Miami will watch video of the defensive breakdowns before Tuesday's Game 2 (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) - though James may well have dove into video on his own Sunday - and come back better prepared to defend, especially on pick-and-rolls.

"We just broke down defensively," James said. "Couple of miscommunication errors, which we will clean up."

One hallmark of the Heat throughout during their run to four consecutive Eastern Conference finals is that they don't panic or overreact. They see what they did wrong, own those mistakes and try to correct them in the next game.

The Heat have lost Game 1 of a series a few times in the past four seasons - in 2011 against the Chicago Bulls, in 2012 against the Oklahoma City Thunder and in 2013 against the Bulls and San Antonio Spurs. Miami won all have four those series, the first three in five games each.

Losing one game isn't a disaster.

"It's easy to move on from (a loss) because we're a team that understands where we lost the game," Wade said. "The things that we didn't do great today, we'll do better in Game 2. ... We feel that we can win here. We feel we have to play a lot better on the defensive end of the floor to be able to do that."

The Heat came here to steal home-court advantage. They can still do that with a victory in Game 2. The pressure is equal. The Heat don't want to fall behind 2-0 - they haven't trailed a series by two games since losing to Dallas in the 2011 NBA Finals - and the Pacers don't want to head to Miami with the series 1-1.